haunts

Fate has never been kind to old ghosts like me. I was content not to haunt all of the old places where everything happened. I was content to live out my life in the city, a place bereft of memory or personal significance. I would even go so far as to say I was happy here. I had friends, a lover, and even if I didn't like them much they were my friends, my lover. We got along, exactly like humans do. We lived our little lives with our own little insignificant dramas. I was allowed to be fond of it without ever caring about any of it. That's all that I wanted.

I got a phone call late at night, at the sort of hour that people who don't think about time zones think is appropriate to call east coasters. Maybe if I had looked at the caller ID I'd have been allowed to stay, but probably not. I said, "Hello?" She said, "Hi," and it was exactly like I remembered, exactly like she'd always said it back when we talked. For a minute I forgot where I was and I just asked, "How are you?"

She said that she was pretty okay, and I smiled. She said, "Hey, didn't you end up in New York?"

"Last I checked."

"What are you doing tonight?"

I didn't have any plans and I always wanted to see her one last time, even after all the other last times. We met for dinner in this upscale pizza place in Brooklyn. I couldn't tell if she was happy to see me, but she smiled and I did too, and it wasn't awkward at all embracing her. She said something about moving here in a week, she was just finalizing the deals, she was glad I was still here, sorry we hadn't kept in touch more.

As dinner arrived and we ate and drank, I was mostly just trying not to remember all the reasons we hadn't kept in touch, the reasons I ended up here in the first place, and smiling and laughing at her jokes, and wondering when she'd ever been so talkative and so cheerful, and then we shared a taxi back to her hotel and suddenly she was kissing me and we almost missed her stop and we got out and hurried into her hotel room, celebrities fleeing the paparazzi.

I stopped her and said, "Are you drunk?" and she said, "No," and I knew she wasn't, and she grabbed me by the lapels and now it was too late to run. She was here and I was--

I'm on the next flight to Nashville. I didn't sleep well in the hotel I was staying at in Brooklyn. I look like a ghost, all pale skin and dark circles around my eyes, with my suit and hat mostly so nobody can see that you can see right through me. I don't know what I was doing in Brooklyn. I feel a little bad leaving the girl in my hotel room there, but I'd have felt worse waking her, and I had a plane to catch. Nashville calls. I can see bright things in my future.

edited

He lived his life impulsively, and believed, genuinely, in honesty above all else. And maybe she found it an admirable trait at first. It was easy to appreciate, certainly, that everything he did was entirely open. There were no lies, no taking anything back. He said what he meant and meant what he said--and he said what came to mind. That was important. You can't be honest if you leave anything unsaid.

And she spent her evenings in her study writing and refining and editing, and he never really paid attention to the process, until she mentioned one day that she had to cut out an entire section to make it work. She often had to--sometimes she'd write six pages of introduction, only to cut them out because none of it was actually worth reading.

He asked what she did with them when she cut them out. "I don't--I just delete them. Is that what you mean? It's usually just not worth keeping."

"You just de--you know what, forget it."

She couldn't, of course. Every word she cut out, even if it was just revising a sentence on the fly, felt like she was committing some unspeakable crime, like she was burning books--books that would never even be read, hiding words from the world that would never be seen. The editorial process became utterly untenable. He seemed to approve of this new approach.

She left him not long after, of course. There are certain things a writer couldn't do for love nor money.

the accident of

She contemplated ignoring the phone call. It had been a rough day and there was simply no impetus left to do anything. It had started snowing already, and there was a certain appeal do doing nothing more than making hot chocolate and reading a book, and pretending the cold would go away if she avoided it.

But she had made commitments. For some reason that was important. They would, presumably, still be her friends if she cancelled, and there was no real reason apart from circumstance she was friends with this group at all--they weren't even united by the shared accident of birth--but she still honored her commitments. It had something to do with proving she had a choice, or perhaps convincing herself she cared.

"Hello?"

"Hey, are you coming out tonight? I just left."

"Yeah. Yeah, I was just about to leave."

"Cool. Did you want to get coffee or something beforehand? You know nobody is going to be on time anyway."

She looked out the window. Between the wind and the rainy snow, it was promising to be one of the dreariest evenings of the year. "There is nothing I want more than a coffee right now," she said. "Meet you there in five."

probation

They let me out early. They said I was a model prisoner. I said I learned my lesson. I said I'd be good. I meant it. I meant a lot of things. The worst thing in the world is a man who says something he doesn't mean. Sometimes at different I'd say things that meant different things. I meant them both. Sometimes at the same time.

Sometimes.

I meant it when I hit her. I meant it when I yelled at her. I meant it. She made me so angry. She made me. I still mean that. Not "I got angry." She made me.

And I meant it, every time I said I loved her, even today. Even calling her, saying it now. It was the first thing I did now I'm free. I told her I did my time. She told me she never wanted to see me again. I said that I probably deserved that.

I'm not sure why they call this freedom. I know what I did makes me a monster. I know that. That's what the prosecutor said. That's what the arresting officer said. I know I should have been better. Maybe I should have listened to my dad more.

But I know I'm not a monster, too. I'm just a man. I do my best. Sometimes that's not very much, but I do my best. I mean well. I just try to get by.

I don't have the money for a train out of this city. I don't have anywhere else to go. I promise I'm a real hard worker.

succinct, pt. 6

They meet for dinner and he casually mentions that he is going to quit his job. She asks if he has already turned in his two weeks notice, and the pause that follows is a little more awkward than she had hoped.

He says, "I'm not giving notice. Today was my last day."

"That's--you should at least give notice."

"No."

"Well, what are you going to do?" she says.

"I bought plane tickets. You should come, it'll be fun."

"I can't just leave."

"Sure you can. I am."

"I really can't. I don't even know why you're leaving."

He shrugs. "I'm trying to figure that out, myself." She stares at him. He says, "So how was your day?"

And that, she knows, is all they will ever say about the subject.

succinct, pt. 5

They do not see each other for a few days. This is not unusual, because they are both busy, and there is a certain level of trust there. They know that they do not mean anything by it. So he is both surprised and unsurprised when he receives her phone call--surprised by what she has to say, unsurprised that she is calling at all.

She asks if he wanted to talk, if that is why he left in the morning. If that is why they haven't seen each other. He says no, and that he has just been busy, and the second part is true. He has been busy and he has been thinking, which he usually does not do when he is busy. He is thinking about everything in a way which is not entirely new, but has never been this constant.

"Hey, I'm on break, I don't have a lot of time, can I call you back when I'm off?" he says.

"Sure. I don't know. I'm just worried."

"Don't be. I gotta go. Love you."

"I love you, too." He hangs up.

This is not quite right, either. He decides that something needs to be done.

succinct, pt. 4

He is not so good at confrontations or sometimes even conversations, especially with his careful girl, who is confident and competent and knows what to say. He is not inarticulate, but he is succinct because he lets other people talk over him. He thinks that rehearsing what he will say will help him.

"What do you want to be called?" he is saying to himself, and then he says, "I will call you that." Mostly he says this in his head. Occasionally he says it out loud, though quietly. He is on the train to meet her at Miracle of Science, where she has said she is hanging out with a few of her friends.

It is crowded when he arrives but he finds her in a large group in the corner, and goes over. She greets him with a little more enthusiasm than he expected. "You came! Have you had the burgers here? You need to order a burger, it is the best burger you will ever eat," she says. She introduces him to her friends. He says hello.

The conversation is too fast for him, so he sits and hears snatches and occasionally injects something--too little, too late. But she was right about the burger. To an extent.

She is drunk by the end of the evening, but not too drunk: she is careless with her language and a little unsteady, emotionally and literally. He has missed his chance to talk to her. They walk home--she insists on walking, though he is willing to pay for a cab--and tonight he offers to stay with her. She is out like a light as soon as she hits the bed, and he decides to leave quietly in the morning.

succinct, pt. 3

He dresses himself the next day with the intention of looking careful, like his careful girl. He remembers reading somewhere that if you look sharp you will be sharp, and it sounded compelling, perhaps because it used words like 'study.' Even as he follows the advice of the ephemeral article in question he questions it. He certainly doesn't feel any sharper or more attentive.

Still, he has to admit, he is standing up straight and there is a swagger to his step that he doesn't usually have. Today he feels like, as he takes his coffee on the train, he may just look like a busy and, no doubt, interesting professional.

Then he starts really thinking about that email from earlier. Or rather, he starts thinking about himself--about how he sees things. His life, his job, his habits. His relationship with his careful girl. It is, he decides, quite different from the reality of things. He is not sure of anything about himself, really. He knows only what he thinks he knows. Did he mean something by calling her by that little nickname he'd never used before? It felt so natural, and he certainly didn't think about it.

Could he have meant something by it? Was he somehow insincere without knowing it, or, worse, was he somehow sincere without knowing it? What is, as the bard put it, in a name? Would not a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? Would not calling a rose by some other name naturally raise suspicion? Why would you call a rose by some other name?

Distracted with these thoughts he misses his stop for work and has to take the train one stop in the other direction. He arrives late and disheveled, having completely forgotten why he is dressing up and looking sharp. He has to talk to his careful rose tonight.

succinct, pt. 2

When she invites him into her apartment, he declines. "It's not much further," he says, and there is something about the way he says it that gives her pause. He kisses her, and he says good night, calling her by a name he's never called her before. This is not lost on her, but she doesn't say anything about it.

It's still early, as far as she is concerned, so she puts on a movie and pours the last of the red wine they opened the other night. It is not, as she fears, vinegary. She puts her concerns out of mind and drops off before the climax of the movie.

She wakes from strange dreams at four in the morning, and now her mind is racing, because she doesn't remember falling asleep, and that is upsetting. And now she remembers the strange name he used, and now she is worried. She begins typing an email, hesitates, begins calling his cell phone, hesitates again, and settles for the email. She passes out again. In the morning there is an email waiting for her that says he didn't mean anything by it and honestly didn't even remember calling her that.

She worries at first, but by the time she has taken a shower and gotten dressed the sun is high and it's a beautiful morning in the fall, and there's simply so much to do today.

succinct, pt. 1

She is, he reflects, careful in her appearance. It is not meant as an incisive comment. Her hair, her clothes, everything is intentional. He is whatever the opposite is of careful. Thrown together, perhaps. His jacket is oversized and slightly rumpled. His jeans are worn. His shoes are more than battered. His hair is always unkempt.

They do not look together, is the point. When she smokes she looks perfect, composed, European. When he smokes he looks downtrodden and destitute. Coffee in her hands is an elegant beverage. In his hands it just keeps him together.

They are sitting next to one another on the train now, and she is talking about something--he is honestly not sure what, and he has been trying to listen. There seems to be no point. He is staring at the advertisements, which are talking about some university he has only heard of in advertisements on the train.

"You're quiet today," she says. He nods but says nothing. She says, "Is something wrong?"

"I'm tired," he says. He feels that something more is expected of him. He says, "It's been a long week."

She says, "Tell me about it," and she tells him about it. He tries to keep up but now he is thinking of the long week which was so unremarkable: about taking extra shifts to cover for his coworkers, about long conversations on the phone with his careful girl, and a hurried dinner that was meant to be relaxing but left him feeling breathless.

Mostly, though, he remembers how little of it he remembered. Not that his memory was going, but that there was simply nothing to remember.

The train stops at Harvard Square, and they get off together, but not looking together. He holds her hand because he is tired of feeling like they are not in the same room, but by then they're outside.

riot police

It was the sort of protest that's a few minutes away from rioting, and I'm not really sure what it was about. Maybe nobody else there did, either. There was just so much anger in the air, and it seemed like any time I asked people what was going on, their response just didn't fit the anger. Maybe it never does. I think that's something to remember.

Some of them didn't like my camera, even though I was just snapping pictures. Some of them would pose or shout their slogans for me. I didn't write anything down. I don't remember what they were shouting. I don't remember why I was there. I just remember getting caught up in it at some point, and I barely remember anything about that. Shouting things I never thought I would into a microphone.

I remember, standing up there, seeing a friend who had come with me framed against the riot police lined up just outside. She was sort of in the fringe of the crowd and I don't know if she saw me. It was a strange image. She was a peaceful person. I took a picture later on.

On the way home she asked me how it felt, and I told her I wasn't sure. I mumbled something about how I just wasn't really me anymore. That was the best I could offer. All I knew is I was glad I had the pictures, later on.

a challenge

I gave her everything except a challenge, and that's probably why it went so badly. People said--she said--I let her walk all over me, and I never really understood. It wasn't like it was a sacrifice, or if it was, it was one I made willingly.

Maybe I didn't understand what she wanted. That's always possible. Maybe she was hoping for something more from me. Maybe she wanted me to do something besides shrug when she made another request and didn't offer anything in return. Maybe. Sometimes she'd try to argue with me, but I'd never put up a fight. It just wasn't worth it.

Normally I'd say something changed but that's not true. Eventually I could tell that she'd gotten exactly what she wanted from me and she wanted none of it. Or, worse, she just came to expect it. Like maybe she deserved it from me. And eventually I realized that she didn't care, or appreciate it. And normally when that happens I'd just sulk, but this time I snapped.

It was brief and nasty. It didn't take much for her to go from exploitative to contemptuous, and for my part the venom was easy enough to unleash. To say that the split was mutual is to miss how much acid there was to it. Two living humans could not have been more hateful to one another. I was happy to be rid of her.

But now it's Monday night and normally we'd be watching television shows I didn't really like right now, and you know what? I'm starting to miss that.

the death of summer

This summer I started noticing the crickets in the evenings, when it was hot out and they seemed so excited. Maybe I shouldn't ascribe emotion to them but that's what it always sounded like: they were excited for it to be summer. It was nevertheless a peaceful sort of sound. It may have been unpleasantly muggy but everything was more or less right with the world.

Of course, like all background noises I eventually stopped noticing them for some reason or another. Maybe I still heard them but they weren't there or maybe I simply stopped being in a position to notice them--the point is I didn't really notice them again until tonight, when I noticed them again, slower, almost mournful, like they were on the verge of not chirping at all. Like maybe they were mourning the death of summer, or perhaps the death of summer was nearly killing them off.

It's one of those things I've never really known anything about in any real sense. But I know there's a point where they stop, and there's something a little sad about that.

before or since

Sometimes I take people at their word. As far as I knew, when she said "We'll always have room on our floor" she meant it. Even after everything fell apart--especially then. There was that look in her eyes, like she knew what was going to happen and she meant it still. And we shook hands--I don't think we ever did that before or since--and she called me a name she never calls me, and it was like she knew. Not that I knew what that meant at the time.

Maybe it was a mistake to believe her after everything we said. Not all of it could be unsaid, and I still remembered the sting of every one of her words, and still wince every time I think of mine. There's always regrets.

When things fell apart that didn't have anything to do with her and all of my other options failed me I decided I'd try to stop by. It had been over a year. There wasn't a lot else to do. I knocked on the door.

She looked better than ever and she smiled, sort of, when she saw me. And she made coffee and we talked for a while, and then I asked if I could possibly sleep on the floor. There was a pause and her smile froze, and she said that tonight wasn't good. She said that she was sure I could find a place.

Six months ago I would have called her on her promises. I'm still not sure what changed.

the other kind of fog

I'm not sure when it started, but I've been in this fog lately. It's not that my mind is any less sharp than it usually is, or even, in a certain sense, that I'm less perceptive--but in the other sense that's exactly the problem. When my mind isn't focused on something, I don't notice anything. I'm unsteady when I walk. I don't notice obstacles or people. Today I was walking home and someone I know was standing on a street corner and greeted me, and I just stopped and stared at him for a moment before I realized he was actually talking to me.

I'm not sure when it started. Maybe it's always been like this and I've only just noticed. I don't think anyone else has noticed yet, unless they notice the strange look in my eye as I try to force myself to focus on basic tasks. One foot in front of the other. Don't walk into the man waiting for the light to change. Don't walk into traffic.

And then I sit down and I smile and I force myself to focus and for a while I even convince myself. But eventually the fog rolls in again.

no apology necessary

She finds me in the back of the library and sits down opposite me and says, "Hey," like nothing was ever wrong. Yesterday we weren't speaking and she was pointedly avoiding my gaze. I sigh and mark my place and say, "Hey." I want to ask her what she wants, to tell her that everything is not okay. Instead I ask her, "How's it going?"

"I'm good. I'm good." She seems more self-conscious of the volume of her voice than the fact she is talking to me at all. "What are you up to these days? I haven't seen you in forever."

"Yeah, I've been busy. I haven't been very exciting. I guess that's why I haven't called or anything."

"Well, hey, if you're free this weekend--"

"Uh, what day?"

"I don't know. Maybe Saturday?"

"Sure, sure. Uh, go on."

She nodded. "I was going to watch some movies, at my place. You're invited, if you, if you--" she trailed off, then smiled.

"I think I can make it."

"Good. I'll, uh. I guess I'll see you then."

And she leaves and despite everything I can't bring myself to keep holding a grudge.

reflection

"It's been forever since we've had fog like this," she said. I hadn't even noticed it was foggy. The streets were still wet with the rain earlier, though it was just a fine mist now. The street lights over the parking lot had little cones of light coming from them. She sat down on the curb and put her camera down next to her.

I sat down a few feet away, my feet astride a small puddle reflecting the street light above us. She continued, "It's been forever since we lived in a place that gets fog like this." I nodded but didn't say anything.

"I never thought the thing I'd really miss about home was the weather, you know?"

"Yeah."

She fiddled with her camera some, then pointed it at me and snapped a picture. "Wish we were there," she said wistfully. I kicked the puddle in front of me and broke the reflection into a thousand tiny lines of light.

cigarette voyeur

Lately I've been watching people smoking--sometimes stealthily, sometimes just as part of daily interactions. It's no secret it's a social activity, but what's interested me are the ones who make it part of something else--like the people who only smoke when they're walking somewhere, and unless you see them when they're in transit you'd never know they're smokers. Or the girl sitting outside on her laptop smoking like it's the most natural thing in the world, like it's just something you do all the time. Or the girl I've written about before who smoked and stood waiting for the bus stop with such disdain.

I used to go outside to join other smokers, socially, but I've stopped that. I only smoke when no one else is. It's not a secret, but if someone else lights up I'll quietly snub mine and save it for later. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe I just like the attention, even if it is mostly people giving me strange looks or telling me those things will kill me. For a minute everyone has to pretend to care about me, and only me.

secrets and changes

She called us her best-kept secret, and I suppose that was probably true. It was probably the only secret she managed to keep even from me. Maybe that's for the best. I never understood why I slept on the couch the night we first kissed, when it was raining and we spent forever just kissing in the rain after getting dinner at a dimly lit cafe. We were soaked, and left our clothes hanging in the bathroom and curled up in blankets and towels in front of the TV. I never questioned that it was right of me to wake up at daybreak and go home before she woke up.

Over the years we'd fight, we'd make up, sometimes in the same night. It was a game, but it was her game. I couldn't win. I wasn't sure I wanted to. I didn't really know what it entailed.

But fighting or not we were inseparable and, of course, everyone asked if there was something going on. Sometimes we'd pretend; sometimes we'd just deny it. I wasn't sure what we actually were, so I'd just go with what I felt like at the time. I knew this: I could show up on her doorstep at four in the morning and she'd welcome me in with a smile and put some tea on if I wanted.

I was never sure what changed, or when it happened. We fell apart. It happened just as naturally as anything else did. We ran into each other at the cafe once again, but now the sun was shining and summer was high and the magic was gone. She nodded at me when she saw me and sat down a few tables down, and I finished my sandwich, paid the check and left.

trust me

I had my arms folded and was standing against the wall when she approached, clinging onto her bottle with two hands--like it was liable to escape, or perhaps like it was the only thing keeping her from escaping. Maybe it was both. But she was smiling easily, and she said hi even though I was clearly distancing myself from everyone, and I said hello and relaxed my arms.

She asked if I liked her shoes and I said, more or less honestly, that they were very nice. They were bright green and looked new, and she was modeling them for me, very briefly, still clutching her drink protectively. There was a wary look in her eye, too. I wasn't sure of it until she said, "I don't trust you."

I said, "You probably shouldn't," and she smiled.

"Do you know why I don't trust you?" she said. It was a game.

"You don't have any reason to."

"That's not it." She smiled again. "But you're cute. I'll let you take me home with you tonight."

I had little interest in doing so, and yet--"I was just going to watch movies when I got home tonight. You are welcome to come if you like."

"Okay. But we have to say good bye to everyone first. And we'll need to tell people each other's names."

We exchanged names--mine was real, but I have the feeling hers was made up--and she took my hand and we went around chatting with people like a couple. Then we left and went home and watched a movie or two and didn't watch a lot more, and eventually, lying half-asleep on the floor, she whispered, "I still don't trust you."